The Real Roots Music

Hyperbole has its place. By definition it is an exaggeration made to express emphasis, not to be taken literally. The overuse (or misuse) of hyperbole, particularly in this day and age, has had the unfortunate side effect of undercutting the gravitas of big statements that are meant to be taken literally.

Understand then, that it is without a scintilla of hyperbole that I tell you the upcoming Crossing the Cumberlands concert at the Tivoli Theatre is a once-in-a-lifetime event, one of the most important of its kind ever assembled anywhere.

Scheduled for this Saturday, Crossing the Cumberlands will present one of the most inclusive and exhaustive assemblages of acoustic folk talent to ever grace a single stage. The event, which is being held to benefit the historic Cumberland Trail, is so significant that no less a personage than Elizabeth Peterson, director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, will be in attendance.

The itinerary includes performances by Leroy Troy, the Nancy Westmoreland Group, Ed Brown, Joseph Decosimo, Sierra Hull, Chuck Mead, Tony Trischka, Alan O’Bryant, and many more. It is an exploration of the music of, about and inspired by the Cumberlands from the 1800s to the present day.

Featuring a tribute to the late Fletcher Bright, iconic local musician and the “fearless leader” of the revered Dismembered Tennesseans, the program will also include blues, gospel, frontier fiddling and ballads, rock music, bluegrass and skiffle, the uniquely American music genre that launched the careers of generations of legendary musicians.

The great Lonnie Donegan, the Scottish musician almost single-handedly responsible for the skiffle revival in the UK (the pre-Beatles incarnation, The Quarrymen, was a skiffle group) had his first number one hit with, “The Cumberland Gap.”

Therein lies the key to the Crossing the Cumberlands show, namely that the wide variety of genres represented all to some degree or other trace at least part of their genesis to this specific region of the United States, a fact long underappreciated outside the realms of the folk musician and ethnomusicographers. A particular highlight of the event will be a rare performance by the Hicks family, a lineage well-known for keeping alive Appalachian folk music from one generation to the next stretching back over two centuries.

Featured on Nashville Public Radio for their role in preserving American folk music that would otherwise have been lost to the ages, the Hicks family will be performing a “family song” that first appeared in a handwritten manuscript dating back to 1823, a song that had long been regarded simply as, “one of the songs daddy used to sing.”

Unchanged from its original form, the tune tells the firsthand account of crossing the Cumberland to settle middle Tennessee, most notably a rather significant little outpost called Nashborough.

That the song is still remembered solely through the oral/musical tradition of one family (the manuscript was re-discovered long after that fact by the “upstart ranger” and highly regarded music preservationist Bob Fulcher) strikes to the very heart of folk music. It is a slice of real history, as significant as any letter or broadsheet, carefully curated by one family for seven generations and as such, its value cannot be overstated.

Bookending the range of musical history is Sierra Hull, who emerged as a child prodigy in the ‘90s and went on to attend the Berklee College of Music on a Presidential scholarship. Befriended and mentored by Alison Kraus at the age of eleven, Hull’s awards, honors and distinctions are too numerous to list but include album appearances with Krauss, Bela Fleck and a command performance at the Whitehouse with Krauss and Dan Tyminski in 2011.

Hull occupies a unique position in which she simultaneously preserves the heritage and tradition of the music of the region while advancing and evolving the genre for newer, younger audiences.

I have often bemoaned the overuse of the term “roots music,” musing that too often what would have been a college/alt band in the ‘90s is now, through the magical introduction of a mandolin or banjo, a “roots” band.

Far from that watered-down descriptor, Crossing the Cumberland is the most definitive example of true American roots music ever assembled in one place. There have been concerts in support of the Cumberland Trail in the past, and there will undoubtedly be concerts in the future, but there will simply never be another like this one.

I dearly wish that I could delve in to the history and accomplishments of all the featured performers, there is no single “star” of the show, but regrettably there simply isn’t the space to do so.

My especial thanks to Bob Fulcher, who was very generous with his time and who, despite my own lifelong passion for American folk music, was able to introduce me in no time at all to treasures I never knew existed.

To quote Bob: “Just as the Cumberlands has its hidden places, the waterfalls, sandstone cliffs, caves and coves, so too has the music its own hidden places, just as beautiful, waiting to be discovered.”

Tickets are available now through the Tivoli box office, and in addition to the concert, two one-hour workshops are being held for ticket holders on Saturday for an additional $10—Hicks Family Ballads and History at 1 p.m. and Cumberland Fiddle Styles at 2 p.m. All proceeds go to support the upkeep and maintenance of the historic Cumberland Trail.